Chapter Text
His own legs that had rotted and decomposed before him and were mangled beyond repair shuffled his fleeting and dead body through the streets of, what once, was regarded as his home. What he once saw as his home. What should have been full of love, warmth, and protection, but never was. He couldn't help but wonder if Ennard felt that same way. The screeching and, ironically, conflicting thoughts of the children that were trapped inside of Ennard against their own will roared inside of Michael's head, and he was unable to think. It was just all too loud. He could no longer think about his father, or even, what actions he would take after all this is said and done. The only thing he could rationally think about right now was how much he wanted Ennard out of his body. It was torture; it was so fucking painful. He wished that he had never caved. He wished that he remained locked in that damn office he found, but they had lured him out with the empty promise of being with Elizabeth again. It was like dangling candy in front of a baby. They then bought him to the scooper room, where they tore his stomach open right after pumping him full of remnant silly.
But they were just kids. They were just a bunch of scared, hurt, confused, and trapped kids. And.. Elizabeth. He couldn't hurt them, or bring himself to be angry at them. He wouldn't. He won't hurt anyone, ever again, especially not kids. But he just couldn't do this anymore. Not like this. He needed them out.
"Get out," he spoke aloud, although he was entirely positive that he didn't actually really fully need to do that. He was sure that Ennard could already hear his breathless and desperate pleas of mercy within his own mind; his pleas that this agonizing and miserable torture that they were putting him through could come to an end, no matter how reluctant, and that he was in so much more pain than could be humanly handled, despite Ennard's proven empty promises and reassurances that the scooper would only pain him for a moment. Maybe Ennard thought they were telling the truth, or maybe they knew damn well all along that they were lying through their teeth. "Get out." Michael said again after he didn't receive an answer from Ennard the first time, and he still didn't receive any sort of answer this time, either. But Ennard went silent, as if they were really truly considering it for a moment, and that gave Michael a little bit of hope. A little bit.
Hope that was, very quickly, crushed like a sad and defenseless bug caught up in the wrong place in the wrong time, after Ennard gave Michael his answer; a sharp and angry sounding, almost offended like, "NO.", and that was it. They went back to piloting him like the puppet he was, like the puppet that he felt like. Making him feel like nothing, and there was absolutely nothing in the universe that he could ever possibly do about it, almost like they had inherently malicious intention, and Michael just didn't understand any of this. Back in that bunker, they sounded so genuine, and they sounded do honest when they told him that they didn't want to hurt him, or anyone, for that matter, and they only needed him so that they could escape this cruel place they were being kept in. They spoke softly, quietly, and even non-threateningly, surprisingly enough. It was nothing like the way that they spoke to Michael, and even to themselves, now. He felt hopeless, he didn't know what else he was supposed to do now, other than try to forcefully remove Ennard, if that were even possible.
He doubted it, but he had to try. He started viciously coughing, like he were a dying patient with a fleeting life that were stuck to a hospital bed, waiting for the clock to strike their doom. He coughed the way that he had sometimes heard William cough after he smoked the several cigars that he had always had with him. He hacked violently, and his torn throat began to twist, burn, and ignite painfully; but that didn't stop him. He was hoping that maybe, somehow, he could get Ennard out of his body this way. It seemed like a silly and rash effort, but he was willing to try anything in this moment, like a desperate prey animal. He felt Ennard wrap some of their wires around his broken and shattered and misplaced bones, almost like they were worried and anxious, and were trying to hold on; and that gave him enough hope to keep going.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of putting himself through sharp and firey agony in an attempt to stop the torture that he was already being put through in the first place, a wire poked out of his throat, and he felt it press firmly against his tongue, as if it were trying to grab onto something to retreat back into its warm host at the expense of how horrifically painful this all is for Michael. He used his rotting hand that was colored the deep greyish purple that a bruise resembled to grab the wire out of his mouth, and he pulled. He pulled hard. He didn't know if it was actually going to work in successfully getting Ennard out, and truthfully, for some reason, he didn't care if it didn't. He didn't care if this would only mutilate his insides ten times worse than they already were for nothing; he just had to try. He had to try anything he could.
And truthfully, it had hurt. It hurt a lot. I mean, it was to be expected, but he wasn't exactly hoping on it; that's not to say he didn't know a giant hunk of metal and wires being pulled out of your body through your throat ought to feel like fucking hell, and for a moment, he thought it was. He thought it genuinely was, this must be hell for what he did to his brother when he was fourteen. This must be a punishment, he thought. He must be in hell. His thoughts swirled with regrets like thorns that bled hot blood into his screaming mind: Screaming for him to stop. Ennard must have been sent from Satan personally to come reverse the roles so that Michael could be poisoned the way he leaked his own onto others.
Pools of blood covered his rotten torso, and his legs, and his feet, and his vision started to blur and fade, although he questioned if that was anything that could even be remotely considered out of the ordinary, because his vision was always blurry due to the remnant and agony he was pumped full of. He was involuntarily vomiting gallons of hot crimson blood onto the pavement, but that wasn't the only thing that was coming up. Just as he had oh so desperately hoped for, more and more wires that belonged to Ennard came up aswell, and that filled his empty shell of a heart with what little hope the universe had left in store for him; but at this point, he knew God was just a witness and a bystander.
This was hell, after all, and nobody was coming to save him.
It was almost akin to hollowing himself out, because Ennard crushed, shattered, punctured, and skewered everything and anything that was once tangible inside of Michael. What made him human, Ennard had picked up in the palm of their hand and squashed. His dignity, his own body, his identity, his self-right, his sister, if he could even say that. He didn't want things to go like this, anything but this. His thoughts stirred and screeched in anguish, almost as much as what was left of his nervous system was. Hot tears rolled down his one left rotten and flattened eyeball that hadn't been turned to sheer mush yet, and the salty tears burned his skin. He burned himself.
After a few more moments of this hell that God crafted carefully and specifically for him, it was over, almost as quickly as it began, which was ironic because Michael was fully convinced that this hell of his was going to last forever, exactly like how he had deserved it. He deserved to be here forever, is what he told himself most days. He would tell himself that none of this was his fault some other days though, but he knew he didn't believe it. He'd tell himself over and over again that he was the human epitome of a cockroach, something that existed purely to bother others and be a disgusting nuisance, a waste, a burden, that he was no better than his father; but it was over, and as such, reflectively, Ennard's parade of this corpse puppet they had earned themselves was over, too.
He shivered as he turned to look down at the disconnected and detached pile of wires that was in front of him now, and it was hard to believe that just a few moments ago, they were huddled up inside of his hollowed out body. They screeched and whirred loudly, seemingly in fear, almost, funnily enough. It seemed like they were trying to scurry away in their vulnerability, and a sense of pity for them washed over Michael, and dampened his already soggy eye more, if that was even possible, which it surprisingly was. Michael did everything wrong, every time, without fail and without doubt. He even did this wrong, his final duty. He stared at the sad and vulnerable pile of wires that seemed to almost be crying in shame, or perhaps pain maybe, and he just wanted to slump down next to them, say "Same", and cry with them. Just absolutely burst into tears with them; but he knew he couldn't. His sister was in there for fucks sake. Isn't that the whole reason he did all of this? The reason he put himself through this parade of horrible extended trauma? It was to help her, and he didn't succeed. What a failure, he could think, that's all he was and had always been, and all he will ever be forever.
Ennard's disconnected wires squirmed and wiggled around, desperately trying to work themselves back up erratically, horrified. They wanted away, like they were expecting to be harmed by something, and it was painful and sad to watch. They gathered themselves while whirring, what Michael assumed to be the robotic equivalent of weeping, or sobbing. He felt bad. He felt awful. He just felt crushed, and he felt extremely useless, like there was absolutely nothing in this universe or plane of existence that he could do to save or even help the kids, help his baby sister, his sister who he failed despite his promises that he would save her, that he would put her back together, and that she would be free, just like his father asked him to do. He didn't do any of what he was expected of him, he didn't do any of what he was supposed to do, any of what he wanted to do, and he felt like a worthless fuck up. But he just sucked it up, pushing it back down, because that wasn't the most important thing in the moment, clearly.
He wasn't entirely positive as to what he was supposed to do at this point, so he very slowly and carefully kneeled down to make sure he didn't startle the already heavily frightened thing. Part of him was almost offended at it's state, that it seemed so scared. I mean, did they not just kill him and put him through exruciating agony, all for their own self gain and figured importance? The other part of him snapped at himself for thinking like that. They had been trapped down there in excruciating agony for so, so long. Maybe they had just lost all sense of morality. Maybe they didn't know how to be or act human anymore. It reminded Michael of how he was when he was a teenager, except there was a core difference: He couldn't find a single way to justify what he did. He got on his knees to achieve some form of eye level with Ennard, while still making an effort to not appear below them. He reached for one of Ennard's loose wires, but stopped his finger right before making any physical contact with the metal, signifying that Ennard can make further advancements if, and only if, they themselves wanted to. And so, after a while, the wire extended to wrap itself Michael's finger willingly, a little too tight for his liking, but hey, he wasn't about to complain about that. He was just glad Ennard had done that at all. The wire slowly worked itself up a bit more, wrapping itself around his wrist now, and the whirring got a little quieter and less sharp.
It had begun to sound more akin to humming now, eventually. Michael himself hummed in content response, he wasn't sure what his next move was going to be after Ennard was taken care of. I mean, the obvious next course of action should be to try and find a way to set their trapped souls free, but he had not even the slightest clue as to how he was even supposed to begin going about that. He wasn't even sure how it was possible for them to be possessing Ennard right now. How did this even happen? And, oh God, where even was William Afton? He didn't know where to start, or even what to do, and the crushing awareness that he had no power here began to sink in, and it killed him a little bit more. He once again felt like a fuck up. He didn't know how to fix this, how to right his wrongs, or if it was even possible for him to do so, but Ennard just continued to make that same electrical humming noise. Michael wanted to scream. How could they be humming right now? Were they themselves not even aware of exactly how fucked up this entire situation was? It was absolutely fucking horrible, but yet, Michael's breathing seemed to slow down and get calmer and calmer with Ennard's, and he listened to the somewhat pleasant noise for a bit, allowing his nerves to finally rest. It seemed for a moment like they were trying to reassure and calm him, of course, he doubted that's what their true intentions were, but the thought of it was... Nice, and it kind of worked, oddly enough.